Snowy Shaw is one of the more well-known and prolific Metal artists. Over 20 years he has been involved in over 20 different bands. His talents, charisma and roles are legendary acting as guitarist, bassist, producer, engineer, photographer, editor, singer and perhaps the skill he is most known for, drumming. Since getting his start with King Diamond in the late 80’s he has worked with so many it would be pointless to list them all but to drop a few names, he has Sabaton, Dimmu Borgoir, Therion and Mercyful Fate on his resume. Not bad! Now finally he has a ‘solo’ album, sort of.

To celebrate 25 years in the business Snowy put together a concert in Sweden around Halloween and brought in a ton of guests. He played a wide range of songs from his various bands he has been in. The album simply called THE LIVESHOW was captured on DVD and CD and is now available in a nice box. Technically, I’m reviewing the advance digital promo of the live CD and not the whole box, which I hope to own one day. Based on preliminary marketing, it looks pretty nice. He did something similar in 2011 with an album called ALIVE but it was digital only, this is the real deal.

The live album doesn’t sound as crystal clear as some live albums I’ve heard which makes me think there was very little tweaking or post-production correcting. Some live albums just sound TOO good if you know what I mean. This sounds a bit raw and it sounds like the crowd was a bit on the small side. He runs through eleven songs that cover 70 minutes. There are tunes from his various bands he has been in Mercyful Fate, Dream Evil and so on. There is a really cool Dimmu medley and the highlight is his drum-solo tied in with the Therion cut ‘Typhon’. Snowy addresses the crowd in English and chats a bit giving the album some character. The song selection is excellent by no means predictable. Of course, he has many guests appear on the album that is one of the major draws but I feel it would be even cooler to see them in concert.

The major problem is that the CD is not representative of the concert. The box has two DVD’s the two full shows from 2011 and 2013 but the album is edited. Who wants to hear only part of a concert? This is the one major flaw of the concept. Both live albums, the full concerts should have been included as live albums. The tracklist of the CD is different than the tracklist of the DVD’s so it is really confusing and frustrating. Where do these songs come from? What was played, when and where and why is the entire show not available?

THE LIVESHOW is a cool collectible for fans of Snowy and his long and respected career. I think if I had the full box CD/DVD and the album was the full concert I’d give this a much higher mark. In a sense this review is almost a non-review, more of a promotion for the full package of THE LIVESHOW because I support snowy, his immense talent and everything he does, but I feel like I wrote this review with one hand tied behind my back metaphorically, not having the entire physical package in front of me to enjoy. I generally avoid blatant endorsements of bands and their merchandise but this is a special case for a unique item and it is available for sale on his website.